Is there any word that’s had a wilder evolutionary path than “gothic”?
Seriously, it went from meaning this:
to this:
to this:
and finally ended up as this:
You go you funky word, keep on trucking.
There’s a good reason for that!!!
Here’s an explanation literally no one asked for, and OP probably already knows, but I like talking about all my hyperfixations, and this covers like four of them. (Now, I’m going off the top of my head and its been a few years since I took an art history class) but the jist of it is that the “new” cathedral style that ended up being called Gothic, was called so, because the flying buttresses and pointed arches, and other pointy, overdramatic details were considered kind of barbaric compared to the older style. I want to say this was the point where cathedrals went from being ‘ornate’ to ‘dear god what the fuck are you even doing?!”
So basically we have gothic as this word that means, big and old and overdramatic and vaguely threatening. Which goes perfectly with the mood needing to be set by authors who place characters dealing with a crisis of faith, or a crisis of morality, in this big old mouldering expansive tomb of a house that represents everything of the distant past and the dark secrets rotting the foundations of polite society. But…the Victorians worshipped the austere version of the greeks and neoclassical, and all that neat white marble. But also an austerity as far as people went, there was this Christian ideal to aspire to.
So the decrepit tomb aesthetic, the doom and gloom and the decaying manor house, The Fall of Usher thing, it was popular for the same reason anything creepy is popular now. That love for the morbid and forbidden has never not existed. I mean…Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a best seller when it come out because it had all of the above and THEN some.
So far we’ve got Gothic as old and decaying and overdramatic and threatening but also kind of sexy (see gothic romances, or the use of gothic romance/gothic horror to explore Victorian fears and anxieties about sex and death and immorality).
Fast forward to the late 1970s when Siouxsie and the Banshees distilled that into a look and a performance. They were a punk band, but Siouxsie dressed like a vamp, she had the Theda Bara makeup and wore Victorian lingerie on the outside, but also fishnets and pointy boots. She was the femme fatale. She had the sex and death of both Vampira and Theda Bara, but her and the band had the theatrics of Screamin Jay Hawkins. A journalist described their music as gothic, as an insult, and exploded outward from there. But…they weren’t the sole band to be described this way, or necessarily the first to sound like that or dress like that. But they had enough of all these things to have that word linked to them. And their fans, and The Cure’s fans, and Sister’s of Mercy’s fans, and Bauhaus’ fans, created the subculture and look that we call Goth now. And much of the look has fanned out and expanded from years and years of the world’s most dramatic people trying to outdo each other at the club.
That’s how we got from A to B. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
“i don’t like either candidate so i won’t vote” what are you thinking, if enough people wuss out we’re going to have President None Of The Above? hey we’re counting the votes and ten percent of voters stayed home and jerked it to their own ideological purity, guess we just won’t have a president and all the executive level decisions will be made by a magic 8-ball for the next 4 years
i wrote this 2 years ago and – yeah. look, let’s just learn, ok? midterms coming up, pull up your big citizen pants and go do the thing.
I wish people would stop pushing this idea that writing fanfiction is “a stepping stone towards ‘real’ writing” or “a good way to practice writing”. It is writing already. It is. It isn’t a sub-par form of writing as if literature was a high sphere that we can only access if we are Published Authors and a publisher Chose Us and deemed us valid. Hell, a lot of published works out there, many of them best sellers, are in their core transformative fiction of other previous pieces which could be labeled as fanfiction had they been posted in AO3 rather than published by Random House. You are writing fanfiction? Congrats, you’re a writer! You aren’t “in the making”, you’re already doing it. You can improve and learn but you’re already a writer. Whether or not it’s for an income, that’s another subject matter, but a writer, defined as an artist who uses literature as their artform, you already are.
One of the biggest problems I see in the creative writing workshops I attend is that people think they can’t write literature because “they aren’t worthy” or “they can’t be like ‘real’ writers” and it takes so much to convince them that everyone owns literature in the same way, you don’t have to belong to an elite to attempt writing. And if we can teach kids writing fic right now how valid it is, maybe we can start debunking this idea that literature is something you need to be worthy of accessing from its core.
I’m still not over the fact that Hermione Jean Granger managed to snag a famous international quidditch star as her date to the yule ball like. This is the FUNNIEST SHIT. Hermione isn’t even into quidditch. She didn’t even do anything. Viktor Krum just fell for this 15 year old muggle-born girl who spends all her spare time in the library and had never heard of the most famous quidditch player in the world before her best friends took her to the world cup. AMAZING.
On that note every single boy Hermione has dated in canon is a jock. Amazing.
Half the notes on this post are people asking if Ron counts as a jock and I fucking lose it every time. Ron was more excited about Harry getting on the quidditch team than Harry was.
Susanna and the Elders, Restored with X-ray (Right)
Kathleen Gilje, 1998
Oooh my gosh this is rad. This is so rad.
For those who don’t know about this painting, the artist was the Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi.
Gentileschi was a female painter in a time when it was very largely unheard of for a woman to be an artist. She managed to get the opportunity for training and eventual employment because her father, Orazio, was already a well established master painter who was very adamant that she get artistic training. He apparently saw a high degree of skill in some artwork she did as a hobby in childhood. He was very supportive of her and encouraged her to resist the “traditional attitude and psychological submission to brainwashing and the jealousy of her obvious talents.”
Gentileschi became extremely well known in her time for painting female figures from the Bible and their suffering. For example, the one seen above depicts the story from the Book of Daniel. Susanna is bathing in her garden when two elders began to spy on her in the nude. As she finishes they stop her and tell her that they will tell everyone that they saw her have an affair with a young man (she’s married so this is an offense punishable by death) unless she has sex with them. She refuses, they tell their tale, and she is going to be put to death when the protagonist of the book (Daniel) stops them.
So that painting above? That was her first major painting. She was SEVENTEEN-YEARS-OLD. For context, here is a painting of the same story by Alessandro Allori made just four years earlier in 1606:
Wowwwww. That does not look like a woman being threatened with a choice between death or rape. So imagine 17 year old Artemisia trying to approach painting the scene of a woman being assaulted. And she paints what is seen in the x-ray above. A woman in horrifying, grotesque anguish with what appears to be a knife poised in her clenched hand. Damn that shit is real. Who wants to guess that she was advised by, perhaps her father or others, to tone it down. Women can’t look that grotesque. Sexual assault can’t be depicted as that horrifying. And women definitely can’t be seen as having the potential to fight back. Certainly not in artwork. Women need to be soft. They need to wilt from their captors but still look pretty and be a damsel in distress. So she changed it.
What’s interesting to note is that she eventually painted and stuck with some of her own, less traditional depictions of women. However, that is more interesting with some context.
(Warning for reference to rape, torture, and images of paintings which show violence and blood.)
So, Gentileschi’s story continues in the very next year, 1611, when her father hires Agostino Tassi, an artist, to privately tutor her. It was in this time when Tassi raped her. He then proceeded to promise that he would marry her. He pointed out that if it got out that she had lost her virginity to a man she wasn’t going to marry then it would ruin her. Using this, he emotionally manipulated her into continuing a sexual relationship with him. However, he then proceeded to marry someone else. Horrified at this turn of events she went to her father. Orazio was having none of this shit and took Tassi to court. At that time, rape wasn’t technically an offense to warrant a trial, but the fact that he had taken her virginity (and therefore technically “damaged Orazio’s property”. ugh.) meant that the trial went along. It lasted for 7 months. During this time, to prove the truth of her words, Artemisia was given invasive gynecological examinations and was even questioned while being subjected to torture via thumb screws. It was also discovered during the trial that Tassi was planning to kill his current wife, have an affair with her sister, and steal a number of Orazio’s paintings. Tassi was found guilty and was given a prison sentence of…. ONE. YEAR……. Which he never even served because the verdict was annulled.
During this time and a bit after (1611-1612), Artemisia painted her most famous work of Judith Slaying Holofernes. This bible story involved Holofernes, an Assyrian general, leading troops to invade and destroy Bethulia, the home of Judith. Judith decides to deal with this issue by coming to him, flirting with him to get his guard down, and then plying him with food and lots of wine. When he passed out, Judith and her handmaiden took his sword and cut his head off. Issue averted. The subject was a very popular one for art at the time. Here is a version of the scene painted in 1598-99 by Carivaggio, whom was a great stylistic influence on Artemisia:
This depiction is a pretty good example of how this scene was typically depicted. Artists usually went out of their way to show Judith committing the act (or having committed it) while trying to detach her from the actual violence of it. In this way, they could avoid her losing the morality of her character and also avoid showing a woman committing such aggression. So here we see a young, rather delicate looking Judith in a pure white dress. She is daintily holding down this massive man and looks rather disgusted and upset at having to do this. Now, here is Artemisia’s:
Damn. Thats a whole different scene. Here Holofernes looks less like he’s simply surprised by the goings ons and more like a man choking on his own blood and struggling fruitlessly against his captors. The blood here is less of a bright red than in Carrivaggio’s but is somehow more sickening. It feels more real, and gushes in a much less stylized way than Carrivaggio’s. Not to mention, Judith here is far from removed from the violence. She is putting her physical weight into this act. Her hands (much stronger looking than most depictions of women’s hands in early artwork) are working hard. Her face, as well, is completely different. She doesn’t look upset, necessarily, but more determined.
It’s also worth note that the handmaiden is now involved in the action. It’s worth note because, during her rape trial, Artemisia stated that she had cried for help during the initial rape. Specifically she had called for Tassi’s female tenant in the building, Tuzia. Tuzia not only ignored her cries for help, but she also denied the whole happening. Tuzia had been a friend of Artemisia’s and in fact was one of her only female friends. Artemisia felt extremely betrayed, but rather than turning her against her own gender, this event instilled in her the deep importance of female relationships and solidarity among women. This can be seen in some of her artwork, and I believe in the one above, as well, with the inclusion of the handmaiden in the act.
So, I just added a million words worth of information dump on a post when no one asked me, but there we go. I could talk for ages about Artemisia as a person and her depictions of women (even beyond what I wrote above. Don’t get me started on her depictions of female nudes in comparison to how male artists painted nude women at the time.)
To sum up: Artemisia Gentileschi is rad as hell. This x-ray is also rad as hell and makes her even radder.
I love art history.
I’m reblogging this again to add something that I also think is important to know about Artemisia Gentileschi. Back in her time and through even to TODAY, there are people who argue that her artworks were greatly aided by her father…. As in he either helped her paint them or just straight up painted them himself. Hell, there are a number of works only recently (past several years or so) that have been officially attributed to Artemisia because people originally saw the signature with “Gentileschi” in it and automatically attributed it to Orazio. So, not only was Artemisia Gentileschi an amazing artist and amazing historical figure, but I don’t want it to be ignored that there are people over 400 years later who still won’t give her the credit she deserves, just because she’s a woman and obviously women can’t paint like she did.
I fucking love Artemisia Gentileschi!!
Just because by reading this post I have learnt a lot and it´s worth sharing. Now i know a new painter Artemisia Gentileschi !
I went through Art History. One and Two. I’ve seen all of the paintings above (save for the X-Ray one, which, god, I wish it had been done when I was in class).
Guess what?
Never learned a single thing about Artemisia Gentileschi.
Not. One. Damn. Thing.
in college classes. Not high school – college, higher education where, literally, in one class I learned about sex and STD and rape laws and such, and then turned around and taught about the LGBTQ community to a bunch of cis straight people – our professor included – with only one other person to help – who was a cis lesbian.
And you know what? I’m really pissed off about not learning about Artemisia, because I would have loved learning about her.
Cinderella “plot holes” I am tired of hearing about
“Why didn’t her step family recognize her?” Because royal balls were basically the candle lit equivalent of clubbing in terms of both lighting and sheer numbers. Even if they were right next to her, they probably wouldn’t get a good look, especially since it would have started after sundown. Also, she was the help; they probably hadn’t looked at her in years.
“Looking for someone based on their shoe size is stupid!” See above.
“Was he going to have every size seven in the kingdom try the slipper on?” Prior to industrialization most garments were made by hand to fit the buyer’s measurements, including shoes. It’s why poor people only had one pair. It’s a lot smarter when you consider that they would’ve fit her like a glove.
“You can’t run down stairs in heels!” I know this is a misconception resulting from historical revisionism and disneyfication, but high heels were not originally women’s shoes. They were worn by men. Women wore slippers, which were basically ballet flats. So it’s debatable.
“Glass shoes don’t make any sense!” Okay first of all, it’s called the suspension of disbelief, and secondly, they’re gold in every other version but Perrault decided to change them to something else expensive.
“She just went to the ball to find a man!” I know this isn’t a plot hole but listen. As the daughter of a widower Cinderella would’ve been running the household finances and acting as hostess if he hadn’t remarried. By demoting Cinderella to a servant, her step-mother essentially guaranteed that she would never escape the house, because the only way for her to escape and maintain her status was to marry well, and no one was going to marry a servant. It was essentially the historical equivalent of your mom stealing your college acceptance letters out of the mailbox.
this was not an analysis i was prepared for, i’ll tell you that
On occasion, there is wisdom to be found on reddit.
I might also mention that this White House “secret agent” was very prideful of the GOP tax scam for the wealthy, the deregulation that has allowed companies to pollute again, and the bloated military budget that funds war machines over actual people. As if they alone were able to get those things accomplished.
That’s no resistance.
They are no light in the dark.
They want all the same shitty things as Trump.
They just hate having a manchild as a boss.
A behind-the-scenes cabinet coup d’etat is, in its way, every bit as destructive to democracy as a powergrab by Trump. These people are all scum and human garbage.
Not one word in that piece about family separation. They’re totally fine with destroying children and incarcerating refugees
It’s time to act! The EU Parliament is voting on fan-unfriendly copyright proposals Article 11 and Article 13 on September 12. Signal boost this to your friends, and click the link to learn more and find out how you can help: https://goo.gl/8yhvDp
Guys, if you’re in the EU, PLEASE click the link and contact your MEPs!
backup from Tumblr 